SmackDown: Ghana-born Kingston traded corporate job for WWE universe

The Intercontinental Championship is still up for grabs

Kofi Kingston, who recently lost his WWE Intercontinental Championship ranking, is a college graduate who left the corporate world to realize his dream as a successful WWE wrestler. He will be part of WWE Smackdown on Saturday at City Bank Coliseum.

Advertising states only that professional wrestlers Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler will be present when WWE SmackDown arrives at City Bank Coliseum on Saturday night.

It seems a safe bet that the two will confront one another at some point that night — out of the ring, if not in.Why? Simply because they do not like one another.

Asked in an Aug. 12 interview whether he regards Ziggler a thorn in his wide, Kingston replied, “Definitely, that’s accurate. You tell me, what sort of man hides behind his woman?”

Kingston was referring to his prior two matches with Ziggler. At a July 30 SmackDown, Kingston wound up disqualified because he lost his temper and shoved a referee who did not see that he had been slapped by Ziggler’s girlfriend, Vickie Guererro. On the Aug. 6 SmackDown, Kingston lost his Intercontinental Championship to Ziggler because of interference from Guererro.

It was reported that Kingston and Ziggler got into it again after the match.

“I lost my championship to him. I’ll see him again for the title at Summer Slam,” said Kingston.

WWE’s annual pay-for-view Summer Slam took place three days later, on Aug. 15 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Kingston and Ziggler battled but before a winner could be decided, the ring was stormed by the seven-man Nexus. Ziggler skedaddled; Kingston fought back and appeared to be pummeled.

Thus, the Intercontinental Championship is still up for grabs; whether it will be decided in Lubbock is unknown.Out of the ring, Kingston is friendly and outgoing.

At 220 pounds, he said, “I’m the small guy. The Big Show is 7 feet tall and 500 pounds.”

So Kingston knows he is the underdog in most matches. His favorite wrestlers always have been “the high flyers,” and Kingston has developed his own high, flying moves and deadly drops from the top rope. He adds to his moves by watching tapes of Japanese and Mexican wrestlers.

Even so, few share this African-born wrestler’s background.

After all, he earned a degree in communications from Boston College and worked in the corporate world before using a tax return check to pay the costs of attending wrestling school.

Kingston was born in Ghana; his family moved to the United States when he was 2, criss-crossing the borders of four eastern states before finally settling in Boston. His biography states that he wrestled in high school, but Kingston said, “It was nothing like I expected. There was no ring, no mat, no ropes. I got into it, thinking it would be like the wrestling I saw on television.”

He stuck it out, but still “threw a jumping elbow” at his pillow each night before pulling up the blanket.

His mother, he said, could not understand his decision to wrestle.

“She did not know how big the WWE is,” said Kingston. “When I first started, I was wrestling independently in front of 10 to 20 people at VFW Halls. She thought I had abandoned a corporate career for that; she couldn’t see the big picture.”The timing was right, though. A tryout at the wrestling school was attended by WWE agents and talent scouts. Kingston was signed and learned the basics in now-defunct Deep South Wrestling from trainer Mike Hollow.

Kingston had a lot of the moves down; what he learned, he said, is that, “The WWE is all about storytelling. Story is important.”

And the story, when Kingston was promoted to the WWE, was that he hailed from Jamaica.

Management felt that a Jamaican background and a fake accent (yah, mon) would make him more likely to be accepted by fans. In the past year, he’s been allowed to claim his homeland again, which he described as “liberating.”

And yes, he openly supported Ghana during the World Cup.

He said, “People ask if I cheered for Ghana or the United States. Ghana, because it was my home and because it meant more to them. Soccer is not the main sport in the United States and it is everything, the number one sport, in Ghana. And Ghana was the only African nation to go so far.”

Kingston said he feels “anxious buttterflies” before each match, “but it all goes away when I hear my music drop and that roar from the fans. Being part of the WWE universe is a great feeling. I always remember that, not that many years ago, that was me out there, cheering for Ray Mysterio or especially Ricky Steamboat, my own favorite wrestlers.”

His most memorable match arrived when he wrestled Chris Jericho for the Intercontinental Championship, and won.

“Man, that night was just awesome,” he said. “I was honored to become WWE Intercontinental champion for the first time. That was when I really felt like I had made it, like I belonged.”

Asked if he had seen actor Mickey Rourke in the movie called “The Wrestler,” Kingston said, “Yes, and I liked it a lot. But that movie is not a reflection of the WWE.

“I saw it more like a man and his journey, a man who never gave up on his dream despite his mistakes.”

Kingston certainly has nothing in common with the character Rourke played. In fact, he has become a world traveler, wrestling in more than a dozen countries.

“The WWE universe is strong everywhere we go,” he said. “The most interesting place I’ve wrestled was an outdoor gladiator stadium in France, built almost 2,000 years ago. You could not help but think that here we were, about to do battle in the same place where real, live gladiators had fought and died.”

Still, of the training, matches and travel, he regards travel as the toughest part of the job.

“We live for the matches,” he said. “The training is understood. But this job does take us away from our families. I get to the airport, and it is a bittersweet feeling — because that plane takes me where I get to do what I want to do.”